Posts in Category: Eclipse

Eclipse Helios (3.6) includes an improved version of Eclipse PDT, labeled 2.2. It is also included in the current Zend Studio (7.1 and above). Among other enhancements, it dramatically improved the performance of code lookup-related tasks like searching references, creating a type hierarchy and even code completion. This is due to a new design, inspired by nWire, which uses the h2 database engine as a persistent storage for this data. 

The h2 database is a high-performance, low profile, Java native database engine, created as a successor to the widely used HSQLDB. It is open source and free to use. nWire uses h2 since its' early days. We gathered a lot of experience on how to optimize h2 and improve its' performance. There's a lot that can be done from the software developer side, however, even as an end user, there's still some simple techniques you can follow to improve the performance on your machine.

The database files

The h2 engine, as it is used in PDT and nWire, is running from within the Eclipse main process (in embedded mode and not as a server) and keeps the information in local storage, i.e. disk files. As a simple analogy, it is a bit like Microsoft Jet database engine used in MS Access. The database files are kept inside the workspace folder. The location of the workspace folder appears in the title of the main Eclipse window.

Under the workspace, there's a special folder called .metadata (beginning with a dot). It may be hidden on your machine. This folder contains settings and temporary files for the workspace. The database files are located in:

• For PDT: <workspace folder>/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.dltk.core.index.sql.h2/
• For nWire: <workspace folder>/.metadata/.plugins/com.nwiresoftware.nwire.core/ndb/

The database files end with .db suffix. When you work with PDT or nWire, the IO activity around these files is intensive. Keeping the IO smooth is the key to improving your performance. These files can get pretty big. For example, I have a workspace containing the Magento code base with over 5600 PHP files and almost 450K line of code. The PDT repository occupies about 84 MB and the nWire repository is about 1 GB.

1. Disable virus scanners

The first thing you should do is disable virus scanning on database files. This has a major performance impact. The database engine will never execute code stored within the database, so there's no danger of malicious code being executed. Most virus scanners allow disabling the scan of a given folder (see the folders above) or a given suffix (the .db suffix).  

2. Use a fast storage device

Some people use a USB flash drive to store their workspace. Some store their workspace on a network drive. The impact on your performance in these cases will be substantial. If you want to achieve optimal performance, store your workspace on a fast storage device with a fast interface. Use your internal HDD (or SSD) for that purpose. Make sure the drive is properly maintained and has some free space available for the database to grow. If the file system requires it (FAT and NTFS), make sure to defragment your disk periodically.

3. Keep your JVM up to date

Keeping an updated JVM can improve the performance of h2. Especially if your are using an "ancient" version. 

4. Delete the database if your experience problems

In some cases, the database may get corrupted. This can happen, for example, in case of a power failure or a crash. When h2 loads the database, it will try to fix the corrupted data, which may take some time, depending on the database size. In case of PDT and nWire, the data is not really worth saving: it can be recreated by analyzing your source code. This means, you can safely delete the database files. Use this technique if Eclipse hangs when starting up or loading nWire. Make sure you close Eclipse first. The database will be recreated when you restart Eclipse.

5. Do not backup the database

If you are using an automated backup solution (e.g. TimeMachine, or a remote backup software), make sure to exclude the database folders from the backup.  These files are big and they will change frequently, which means it is a lot of data to back up. As I mentioned above, it is really unnecessary, since the data can be recreated. Needless to say, running the backup while working in Eclipse will seriously affect the IO performance.

Conclusion

Use the above tips to keep PDT and nWire running smoothly. If you have more tips or questions, let us know in the comments. For more information on h2 performance see this page. 

Aptana Studio is one of the most popular tools for web development. It is Eclipse based and includes support for PHP. Many developers ask: Does nWire support Aptana? Well, I'm afraid the answer just got a bit more complex.

To understand the answer, one needs to be familiar with the state of PHP in Eclipse. Eclipse is an open source community. The Eclipse Platform houses many projects under its' roof. It endorses the development of external plugins and tools, some open source and some proprietary. As an example, Java development is supported by a very strong project called JDT (Java Development Tools). It is one of the first projects and a lot of person years were invested in it.

PHP development is supported by PDT (PHP Development Tools). However, unlike in the Java case, high quality PHP development tools arrived late to the Eclipse party. This opened the door for a number of PHP plugins which were developed outside the Eclipse foundation over the years. Once PDT proved to be a quality contender, most of these projects were abandoned. nWire for PHP was developed for PDT 2.1 and above with support from the PDT team. Thus, it requires the use of the official Eclipse PHP support, which is PDT.

Aptana Studio is an open source IDE based on Eclipse. It borrows some plugins from Eclipse and adds some of its' own. Version 1 of Aptana did not include PDT, but rather a different plugin known as Aptana PHP. In version 2, Aptana Studio moved to PDT, abandoning the previously developed PHP support (see the Aptana Studio 2 release notes). Users of Aptana Studio 2, which is based on PDT, can use nWire with Aptana Studio.

A couple of weeks ago, a beta version of Aptana Studio 3 was released. In this version, PDT is no longer a part of the distribution and, instead, there's a newly developed PHP editor (see the release notes). This means that the new release is incompatible with nWire for PHP, which requires PDT. Users of Aptana Studio 3 cannot use nWire at the moment.

Is this the final verdict? Probably not. Users of Aptana might still be able to use nWire in the future. It should be possible to add PDT to Aptana Studio 3 and use it instead of the Aptana developed PHP support. This will re-enable nWire. However, at the time of this writing, early beta users are reporting issues with the installation of PDT with Aptana. We hope these issues are resolved before the final release.

Finally, we are considering support for Aptana PHP (and perhaps even Ruby) in future nWire releases. If this is something which you'd be interested to see, please chime in and vote in our poll.

June is a festive month for the Eclipse community: the release of a new version. This year, the new version is called Eclipse Helios or Eclipse 3.6. nWire 1.3 does not officially support this new release, but we are already using it successfully in our labs. It should work just fine, so we invite you to try and report any issues you encounter. Official nWire supports Eclipse 3.6 will be released in the upcoming weeks.

For those not familiar with the Eclipse release cycles, here's a brief introduction. The Eclipse that you download from Eclipse.org is actually a collection of many projects. These include the platform itself, JDT (Java Development Tools), PDT (PHP Development Tools), WebTools and many others. Each year, there's a single release for all these projects. It is called a "release train" because it leaves exactly on time. Everybody has to be ready and board the train, otherwise they miss it.

The Helios "Release Candidate" (RC) build can be downloaded today. The final release will be available on June 23rd. If you want to be among the first to download the new release, you might want to join the "Friends of Eclipse" program.

So what's new in this release? Well, official release notes will be available with the release itself. We also recommend reading the articles which are released as part of the traditional Eclipse Blogathon. The changes may not be that obvious, for a number of reasons:

• Most of the core Eclipse project are mature and fully featured, so the changes are minor.
• Many changes and additions are behind the scenes, providing richer API for developers who use Eclipse as a base platform.
• There are new and exciting projects which are now the focus of attention, mainly e4, the next iteration of Eclipse which takes the platform into the browser.

Nevertheless, there's a lot to look forward to. Like in previous releases, I will be posting my "Eclipse Hidden Treasures" article on my personal blog (last year, it won the Blogathon). PHP developers are in for a real treat, as the new PDT 2.2 (part of the Helios release) offers much improved performance and many improvements. nWire for PHP uses PDT, and the performance boost is noticeable. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.

Eclipse is a platform built for plugins. Personally I use over a dozen plugins on top of the vanilla Eclipse distribution. All these plugins greatly increase my productivity throughout the development cycle. However, there is a drawback: when setting up a new IDE, installing all those plugins can be very time consuming.

There are a number of solutions for that. Most of them include a custom Eclipse distribution or more plugins. Now, there's another option: using the new Eclipse Marketplace.

The process is simple: mark your favorite Eclipse plugins and the Marketplace will build a personalized update site containing your plugins. This update site can be used in all versions and distributions of Eclipse without the need to install any extra plugins. Moreover, this update site is public and can shared among teammates and colleagues. This process works great for installing nWire along with other plugins from different sites.

There are quite a few PHP plugins for Eclipse. When we started the development of nWire for PHP, we decided to focus on the official Eclipse PHP support: Eclipse PDT. However, we received numerous requests from users using Aptana, to support the Aptana Studio PHP Plugin.

Aptana is an important member of the open-source community in general and of the Eclipse ecosystem specifically. Recently, they decided to unite their efforts and join the PDT team. Aptana Studio site is now hosted in Aptana.org and the Aptana PHP installation instructions point to the installation of PDT.

For Aptana users, there's an added value: nWire for PHP can now be installed along with the rest of the Aptana toolset. So, Aptana users, go ahead and download nWire for a free, fully functional, 30 day trail.

Update: after several questions and requests, I want to make it clear: previous version of Aptana (1.5 and earlier) will not work with nWire which requires PDT. I do invite you to try out PDT.

Update 2: There's a new version 3 of Aptana Studio which moves away from PDT. For more information, read this post.